Persona 4 Point 4
by PrognisAldiev
Summary: The Inaba murders have been closed for four years, and the investigation team have moved on with their lives. Slowly, they have come apart at the seams, and when disaster strikes yet again it hits them unexpected and unprepared. With new allies and enemies in wait, time will tell if they rise to the challenge, or let their friendships waste away... (possible pairings in the future)
1. Chapter 1

**Persona Point**

 **.1 : Midnight Dreams**

"Ah... it's been quite some time since you last came here, hasn't it?" The deep blue and calming atmosphere, plush surfaces, and long but cramped space were all too familiar to Souji. Igor's disturbing face was always a welcome one despite the looks, but the problem was that he didn't remember coming here by choice, and that was rarely a good thing. Arriving to this place through his dreams was usually followed by travesty.

Margaret, sitting to the side with compendium in hand as per usual, looked a little surprised. "Master... the door is locked."

"Oh? So he was _forced_ into the velvet room... how intriguing." Igor smiled wide. "It seems someone wants to bend your destiny yet again, with a little more force this time. How about we read your fortune?" A swipe of his hand over the table before them both, and a set of seven blue cards spaced themselves evenly in a diamond shape, face down. He flipped the first card;

"The Empress, in the downward position." Igor stared intently at it. "Where the upright position would suggest a time of improvement and heightening scale, this says you are already amid a state of downfall, decay... What exactly is falling apart around you, only you can discover." Igor moved on, flipping the next card.

"The Lovers, in the upright position -..." Before their eyes, the card shifted on its own, tilting to skew itself slightly off center. Igor looked down at it more intently than the first. "In the... crooked, position. Which does not exist, but... I suppose anything can happen to our esteemed guest. This would suggest... bonds in need of creating, in need of reinforcing, and not necessarily just yours."

The next card was turned over, and he waited for a second to be sure it wouldn't move. "The Hanged Man, in the upright position. Whatever the trials awaiting you, they must simply be accepted as they are with feelings of helplessness and loss in tow. If you persevere from within, however, you may end up with more than what you lose along the way..." Igor let the cards vanish, glancing up at Souji.

"It would appear that you are being drawn toward the suffering of someone you care for, and to grant them your aid will be a long and arduous road, one you won't leave unscathed. There will be no end in sight, the path to follow will be difficult to trust, and the outcome of this journey unpredictable." Igor made a face that Souji couldn't remember seeing before, and couldn't quite place because of that. Sadness? "As always, we welcome you as our bonded guest to this place, and will help with all that we can. Margaret, the key, please?"

"Certainly." The velvet key, something that had lost it's soft blue glow years ago, sparked to life against Souji's chest on the string he wore it with around his neck. She smiled slightly upon seeing the light. "I see you've kept us close all this time."

Igor spoke up a little as Souji's vision began to fade, likely because he could tell the boy was on the verge of waking; "Not all of your travels will be yours to lead, but reaching the truth takes more than just initiative... to guide others, to guide yourself, is to step forward –not in front."

/

Eyelids fluttering open with reluctance, Souji awoke to exhaustion. He'd gone to sleep only after crunching the company's VIP accounts and filing the necessary transfers of stock referentials for maybe three others besides himself. Being the floor manager at the brokerage side of Japan's top Bank was a job he'd clawed his way into through hard work and raw enthusiasm, but the amount of paper and ink to go through never lessened. He enjoyed having his time filled this way, but the late nights could kill him softly on the weekends. He knew the feeling he had, and could hear the echoes of syllables in his mind that had lost their form as full words, but the glow at his chest was enough to tell him what had happened. He sat up and shimmied out of the covers into his high-rise condo, the linoleum tile kissed his feet with a cold touch. He cringed as he walked to the fridge, neon lights of innumerable buildings trying to scale the windows from just below.

One hand popped an energy drink he was saving inside the bottom shelf on the door of the refrigerator, and his other felt around in the darkness beside the fridge for his home phone. He picked it up, auto-dialled his own office, and left a message with his secretary that would ruin her day this morning; "Get Jushigi to fill in for me. I'm going on a vacation to Inaba, tonight."


	2. Chapter 2

**Persona Point**

 **.2 : Stage Set**

Rise's –or rather, Risette's –comeback to television and other media had seen her bouncing happily onstage as an idol, running around all manner of movies, releasing solo, group and collaborative albums, and generally storming popularity charts in Japan for the past four years. Hitting the age of twenty on the nose last week had been a big celebration, accompanied by a flurry of new offers and plans to her manager as well as herself; the older she got, the more mature her roles became. There had yet to be a shortage of these as her talents and looks were only flourishing, not yet wilting, and wouldn't be for some time to come if she could help it. Even rocking her pigtails the way she tended to do them up, with glittering bracelets, a vest she felt was too big at the collar and a skirt built to tease during ninety-percent of her routine, she looked like she could just as easily throw on a deep silk dress and sing blues atop a piano without missing a beat.

She danced, sang her heart out, and gave the crowd a final smile and wave as the finishing chorus ended to a roaring crowd chanting her name. Her commonly pink-oriented color scheme had changed to a more magenta hue, reflected in the merch her fans were wildly waving about as she exited her spotlight with a sigh of relief. Backstage, she skittered past the tech crew working to bring the light show to a slow close, aiming to jump into her change room and just sit her ass down. It had shaken its quota today.

By the room, her manager was speaking with someone that was a new face to her, though that wasn't much of a surprise. What was a surprise, this man standing next to her agent in this conversation was wearing the uniform of the personal bodyguard unit, the only fashionable _and_ protective outfit her label had managed to fit men into –which made it the only acceptable one for those who would be sticking close to the girls. It was made up of duller colors to keep from clashing, tasteful but functional dress clothes and a long vest that could hide small arms, just enough thickness to the fabric that body armor underneath would be difficult to notice. The hat was optional, but this guy was hiding the front of his ear-length black hair inside of his. She drew on her most pissed off expression just as her manager looked her way, and his retreat behind the new guy said everything.

"You fired Ginta, too?!" She nearly shrieked, but tried to keep her voice as level as possible while getting her anger out. Her voice was still in the zone, and she could easily alert the rest of the staff.

The new guy had an unimpressed expression even as he was closer to the shouting songstress, eyes like circles cut from the sky on a summer's afternoon unblinking but just plain _gorgeous_ as she took a closer look against her will. The rest of him was not quite as breathtaking, but the rigidity and tone etched into every part of his welterweight frame that was visible looked like they were jam-packed with the ability to hurt someone. He wasn't a whole lot bigger than her, and all the other bodyguards and security she'd had up to this point dwarfed him a little, but the taut muscles ready to spring and expression on his angular face looked fit to intimidate a rabid tiger. She was feeling now what her manager felt upon seeing her on approach, but forced herself not to back down, a decision that was tested merely by him folding his arms.

Her manager got her attention when he finally built up the courage to speak; "Rise, you had Ginta so distracted that some perv made it onto private property before the gate security had to come _in_ seeing him on camera. The guy before that, you convinced to let you go out with no supervision, no preparation, which led to immense paparazzi and scheduling problems."

She gave him an offended look that he, again, shrank away from. "It's not like these guys are supposed to keep me caged up! I can go where I want..."

The manager spoke up again; "I understand that you are free to your own decisions, but you've just been reckless every time you can get your way out of the people we hire to keep you safe! I'm sorry, but we can't be lenient about this anymore. Norihada Magoshige will be your bodyguard from today on, and _not_ your steward."

She glared daggers at this Norihada, and his brow furrowed. Finally, he said; "Be pissy all you like. You'll be seeing a lot of this face, whether you like it or not."

"Manager!" She pleaded. He merely gestured for her to enter the change room, to which she gave in for the time being. She was too exhausted for this, but she refused to let it end in the first round. There were some garbled words through the door behind her between the men, and then the footsteps of one walking away, her manager surely. Rise cast herself into the chair in front of her makeup station, tearing away at accessories and washing her face clean with a damp towel. She sat glaring at her reflection in the mirror, even if it was only because she'd lost her primary targets for that. "I'm free to be who I want. I'm not... I'm not just some doll to keep in the toybox until she's needed."

Two sharp knocks caused her head to come out of her own reverie, looking to the door. "Oi. If you're done, can I get in here for a second?" Him again, so soon?

"... come in, Magoshige-san." She had snapped his head off –although it was more like she tried, but he had a sturdy neck –when none of this was really his fault, so she felt like an apology might be in order. He shut the door behind him on his way in, pocketing his hands and looking around in feigned interest. She balled her hands up loosely in her lap; "Sorry about yelling at you back there..."

"Mm." He mumbled acknowledgement, still looking around. He absently checked the closet, which she tilted her head at, but he started talking again before she could ask. "Look, I can't say I really wanted a job like this, but it's the one I need right now. If we could tolerate each other, that'd be grand, but like your manager said I won't be there to fix your drink or anything."

"I know how my manager probably made it sound -"

Norihada cut her off. "I don't think you do. To cut to the chase, he made you sound like some kind of temptress preying on dimwits who pick up this position. I don't care if that's true or not –I'm just going to be strict. So, you have twenty minutes to get yourself in order and down to the limo, before I drag you."

The threat made Rise stand from her seat and an inch from his face, no hint of fear this time around. "You can't talk to me like that."

"I just did. You'd better get moving, Miss Risette."

She slapped him, hard, and she hurt her hand more than she did his face if she had to guess. "I'll move when I damn well want to!"

"Then you'd better want to in about twenty minutes. I'm not screwing around." He stepped around her to walk to the door, and she picked up the first thing her hand found to chuck at him as he left. This turned out to be a large bottle of half-finished champagne from her party that she'd wanted to drink a little after the show, which shattered on impact with the man's head. He stumbled to the right from the unexpected projectile, and just then Rise switched from angry to apologetic, running over to him and setting her hands on his shoulder to see if he was alright.

Her mind went completely blank after what happened next.

Getting his feet tangled in the outfit she'd discarded before the show on the floor, Norihada tripped and fell to the right entirely, directly into the television meant for watching other performers before it was time for her to come onstage. As if it were a window, he passed through the black screen leaving white ripples where he made contact, and Rise pushed him along as she herself lost her balance when he failed to stay upright. Norihada ended up passing through after pitching upside-down due to hitting the bottom half of the TV frame, his feet smacking the top before following gravity and into the monitor.

Rise watched in a stupor as the ripples on the screen faded, and as she caught up to reality she slapped her hands over her mouth in order to keep from screaming in pure terror of what she'd done. It took her a few muffled whimpers to calm herself down to the point where she began to pace, eyes glued to the TV like it would spit the guy back out any second.

She found her phone in her purse, almost dropping it to the floor with shaky hands, as she dialed in Souji's number. When she got instant voicemail, she panicked a little before going through her contacts for someone else. She had Kanji's number, but he was an assistant teacher in America or something right now and she didn't think he would pick up. She didn't have Chie's, Yukiko's, Yosuke's or Naoto's numbers anymore... Naoto ran an investigative business, though. She googled it, called the number, and found that she was also away on that same work.

"Oh god, Oh god... What do I do? I need to... Oh god..." She slumped against the wall, cradling the phone in her hands, until she remembered the Amagi Inn. She googled that number next, and the dams behind her eyes broke once she heard the familiar voice of Yukiko;

"Hello, you've reached the Amagi Inn. How may I help you?"

"Yukiko..." She wasn't able to say much else. There was too much to find a place to start, too much they had to catch up on. The pause brought Yukiko on the other end to coax her;

"Hello? Um... Is this Rise?"

The fact that Yukiko recognized her voice was probably due to her career, but it still made her smile nonetheless. Once she took another second to pull herself together, Rise nodded though she knew that was pointless over the phone. "Yukiko, I... I threw someone into the TV. I mean, _into_ it. It was an accident! I swear it was an accident! But... but... it's not supposed to be there anymore! The TV world is gone, right?! I shouldn't have been able to!"

"... calm down, Rise. You need to tell me exactly what happened, okay?" They discussed the availability of their old friends once Rise explained the whole fiasco, and Yukiko sighed. "I can get a hold of Chie and Naoto. We'll figure this out once you've come here. How long till you can be at Junes? Should I pick you up from Marukyu?"

"... Yukiko, I'm in Hong Kong."

This had only ever happened in Inaba before. The enormous distance between them during this crisis was well beyond what Yukiko expected, if her prior assumption said anything. They paused again, stifled by stress and confusion. "Rise, we'll figure something out. Just keep calm."

"He's going to die in there if we wait, Yukiko! It starts to rain tomorrow!" She began to sob, and Yukiko's soothing voice comforted her even as she stood up to lock the door when her manager knocked. Standing in front of the TV, Rise listened to Yukiko a little more while she made up her mind. "I'm going in after him."

She heard her friend gasp on the other line. "Rise, you can't! You can't fight shadows, going in there won't solve anything! Please, just wait for me to get Chie at least, and we'll -"

"I'm sorry, I have to try! I have to get him out of there –I won't kill someone like Adachi did!" She hung up the call on Yukiko mid-sentence, fearing her resolve would be broken if she heard any more. Tentatively reaching out to the screen, she put a hand through for the familiar skin-tingling sensation of breaching another realm. Soon, she shoved with her feet in order to dive the rest of the way through.

Rise Kujikawa and Norihada Magoshige disappeared that night, the first time they ever met.


End file.
